


Anonymous asked

by Anonymous



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-14 20:58:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2202885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a horribly inept attempt at flirting, Levi accidentally sends Eren anon hate. Well, in his defense, it's not <em>his</em> fault Eren's smile is so damn pretty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anonymous asked

**Author's Note:**

> notes/warnings:
> 
> • dorks who Can Not Spit It Out  
> • recreational use of marijuana  
> • alcohol consumption, intoxication  
> • second-hand embarrassment, probably

[  _x_ ]

Eren tapped his pen against his notebook, looking over last week’s notes and wondering what the hell he was thinking when he wrote them. What did  _“babbage lovelace quote 2 but not on final (see p. 17)”_  mean? Page seventeen of what? He couldn’t remember.

There was also  _“LEVI”_  written in the right margin, triple underlined.

“Fuck. Why do I do this?”

He sat back in his chair, glancing over at the counter. Levi was reading from a textbook, occasionally looking up to glare at students who made too much noise and disturbed the peace of the library.

Eren ran a hand through his hair, wondering what Levi was reading and if he had read his morning message already. He opened up his laptop and sent Levi another message, clicking anonymous before he started typing. He discreetly looked over at Levi, who had just felt his phone vibrate.

> _anonymous asked:_
> 
> a family brings their elderly mother to a nursing home. while sitting in her new room, she slowly starts to lean over sideways in her chair. 2 attentive nurses immediately straighten her up. after a while, she starts to tilt to the other side. the nurses rush back to put her upright. this goes on all morning. later, the family arrives and asks, “are they treating you all right?” she replies, “it's pretty nice—except they won't let you fart.”

Levi covered his mouth with his hand, trying not laugh. There was a sputtering noise from the back of his throat, and a few people turned to look at him. He cleared his throat and put his phone away, resuming his reading.

Eren grinned and grabbed his pen, writing in the margin of today’s notes:

> still laughs at dumb jokes

He triple underlined it and closed his notebook. Grabbing a few new novels he had picked out, he walked up to the counter, where Levi looked up at him and immediately pushed his textbook aside.

“Reading for fun, huh?” said Levi as picked up on of the books. “I don’t know any other student who has the time luxury.”

“Well, mostly I just tell myself I’ll read them, and then they sit on my desk for weeks. And then I return them late.”

“I  _know_. You still owe us $2.75 in late fees from last time. I don’t think I can let you check these out until you pay up.”

“I don’t have any cash on me right now.” Eren clasped his hands together. “Come on, just let me slide just this once,  _Rivaille_.”

Levi shushed him furiously.

“Never say that name,” he hissed.

Eren laughed a little too loudly, though Levi didn’t notice. “It’s not that bad.”

Levi glared at him.

“Sorry,” said Eren. “I really do want to check out these books, though. Can’t you let me go for now?”

Eren was giving him that guilty smile, and Levi grit his teeth because it just wasn’t  _fair_. He would lose his job at the library if they caught him wiping late fees for his friends, and at this point in the year all the good work study jobs were taken. But Eren was smiling at him, his eyebrows upturned just a bit, and Levi muttered a “fuck” under his breath.

“All right, but stop turning in late books.”

“Thanks, Levi,” Eren said, and Levi knew fully well that these books would be turned in weeks past their due date.

Levi just grunted and handed over the books, seeing Eren’s face light up, all dimples and bright eyes.

“Fuck.”

“What was that?” said Eren.

“Nothing.”

“So,” said Eren, forcing out his courage. “How are classes going? Haven’t talked to you in a while.”

“Fine.”

 _Not as fun without you_. Levi missed the one GE class they had had together. It was only for a semester last year, but they sat next to each other, and there was something wonderful about having something to look forward to every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. He could wake up with crusty eyes and a dry mouth with the sun glaring in his face, but for four and a half months there was the promise of Eren with every morning.

“Good. Hope you don’t miss me too much,” he joked. “I guess I’ll see you later.”

Levi’s heart sunk when Eren hugged his books against his chest and left. It was the first time they spoken in weeks. Maybe he should’ve said more than “Fine,” then, when Eren asked him a question.

He wanted to bang his head against the counter. Never had his inability to make small talk hurt him so much. He hated small talk, but enjoyed any words that came out of Eren’s mouth.

Still ignoring his textbook, he grabbed his phone again and scrolled through Eren’s blog. He saw that Eren had posted a new picture of himself that morning.

He was just wearing a towel around his waist, hair still dripping. The caption read,  _“I think my ab workouts are paying off.”_

“Fuck,” said Levi, covering his face with a hand in agony.

 

* * *

 

[ _i_ ]

Eren set down the box on the floor, looking at his room for the first time. It was bare except for two beds, two desks, two drawers, and two chairs. The furniture was wood and cold, no sign of home anywhere.

He picked up the box again and began unpacking his bed sheets, slowly stretching them out on the mattress. Outside the grey sunlight was shining unbearably, leaving nothing dark.

He sighed and lay on his surprisingly hard bed, unwilling to go outside and bring in the rest of his boxes. He wished Mikasa didn’t have a job interview and Armin wasn’t stuck in the countryside visiting his grandparents, or that there was less to carry and his arms didn’t feel so immobile.

When he sat up, he found someone standing outside his doorway, staring at him. The guy looked away immediately, pretending to do something on his phone.

“Do you need anything?” said Eren.

He looked up, glancing around the rather empty  room before answering.

“Do you need help unpacking?” he said after a while.

Eren blinked. “Help?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said,” he replied, looking a little annoyed.

“Uh, sure.”

He turned his head to the side and called out, “Erwin! Help me help this guy unpack his shit.”

Eren smiled at his words, looking him over. He was short and well dressed, a scarf draped around his neck despite the summer heat. He started complaining to Erwin, saying something about not breaking his lamp.

“Aren’t you gonna get up?” he said.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I’m Eren, by the way.”

“Levi.”

They said nothing as they went back to Eren’s car to get the rest of the boxes, passing by other busy freshmen on move-in day.

“No one came to help you move in?” Levi said.

“No, my friends are busy today.”

Levi didn’t ask about his parents.

“Gotcha.”

 

* * *

 

[ _x_ ]

Eren’s daily routine was this:

He would wake up at 7:00 a.m. sharp to the sound of Armin snoring (he adamantly denied it, but Eren had video proof), then walk all the way down to shower in the communal bathroom. He’d walk back just clad in a towel around his waist, get dressed in the first thing he found in his closet, and throw his backpack over his shoulder.

Before he left his dorm room, he would take out his phone, go to levi-not-rivaille dot tumblr dot com slash ask, click anonymous, and leave a message. Today, it read:

i hope your day is filled with less shitty things than yesterday. if it makes you feel better, that barista spilled coffee on me once, too, and ruined my favorite shirt. actually, that probably doesn’t make you feel any better, but i still hope you have a nice day.

At 7:35 he’d be out the door smiling, just in time to catch Levi walking down the hall to the bathroom with sleepy eyes and messy hair.

 

* * *

 

[ _ii_ ]

It wasn’t even a month into college and Levi was already sitting outside in the hallway, helplessly bored. He heard a soft moan from his room and grimaced. Some voice was calling out “Erwin!” and he wanted to barf right then and there.

A pair of legs stopped in front of him, and he looked up to see Eren holding a toothbrush with a washcloth slung over his shoulder.

“What’re you doing out here?” Eren said.

Levi pointed to the door, at which point another loud moan came from the other side.

Eren’s eyes widened.

“Oh,” he said. “I see.”

“Horny bastards,” said Levi.

Eren smiled. “You need a place to crash? I have a TV in my room. And, you know, other stuff.”

“Other stuff?”

…

Levi couldn’t stop laughing, his breath coming out in high pitched squeals as he rolled on the floor.

“She— she—”

They were watching Spongebob, and Mr. Krabs’ daughter was on the screen.

“Her nose is so  _big_ ,” he wheezed, and Eren kept laughing with him while shoving his cheetos in his mouth.

Eren moaned, mouth full.

“This is so good,” he said, taking a fistful and shoving them in Levi’s face. “Here.”

Most of them fell to the floor, and Eren started picking at them mindlessly. He felt around the floor until he found his joint, taking another long drag.

“I love college,” he said as he exhaled. He held it out to Levi afterwards, who took it with a lazy smile.

“You know, you’re pretty cute,” said Levi.

“What’re you, gay?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

When the moaning in the next room stopped, the door swung open a few minutes later, the smoke wafting out of the room. Erwin covered his mouth and nose with a hand.

“What are you two  _doing_?” he said.

Levi threw an arm around Eren’s shoulders, dropping the marijuana and pointing up at Erwin in fascination.

“Look, Eren. Look at how big his eyebrows are,” he whispered.

“They’re fucking huge,” Eren laughed, putting an arm around Levi’s waist.

Erwin looked down at their arms around each other and raised an (apparently huge) eyebrow.

“I was going to say that you can come in now, Levi, but I guess you’re good here.”

“It’s like,” said Levi, still wheezing, “I wonder if he plucks them.”

“Good bye,” said Erwin, closing the door.

Eventually the two fell asleep to the bubbly sounds of Spongebob on the television, their limbs still wrapped together without self-consciousness. When they woke up, the sun was just rising, and Eren partially on top of Levi, fingers buried in his hair.

“Whoa,” he said as he woke, blinking hard. He looked down at Levi, still not alarmed at their sleeping positions. “Wake up.”

He started shaking his shoulders. Levi groaned and refused to open his eyes, just throwing a loose hand around Eren’s hips.

“Whatever,” said Eren, and let all his body weight fall back onto Levi, burying his face in the crook of his neck.

 

* * *

 

[ _x_ ]

Levi’s daily routine was this:

He would wake up at 7:30 a.m., lie in his bed for five more minutes trying to avoid the sun in his eyes, then give up and walk to the bathroom for his morning shower.

He’d pass by Eren at 7:35 exactly, which he always said was a coincidence when Eren pointed it out, but it was such an obvious lie to anyone who knew anything about Levi’s sleeping habits considering he would never wake up before 9:00 a.m. without a good reason. (That good reason so happened to be Eren’s face, and maybe also the pat on the back he sometimes gave Levi as he walked by saying “Good morning.”)

He would shower, walk back to his room, spend five minutes picking his outfit for the day, then grab his messenger bag and textbooks.

Before he left his dorm room, he would take out his phone and go to eren-not-aaron dot tumblr dot com and scroll through all the new posts. With a little disappointment, he saw that there were none today—not a selfie or a terrible pun or a long rant to be found.

He would then go to his own inbox for his daily message. This morning, it read:

 

> _anonymous asked:_
> 
> i hope your day is filled with less shitty things than yesterday. if it makes you feel better, a barista spilled coffee on me once, too, and ruined my favorite shirt. actually, that probably doesn’t make you feel any better, but i still hope you have a nice day.

He let out a short laugh, shutting the door to his room and heading to the nearest coffee shop, where he would spend the next two hours studying because he had woken up two hours earlier than necessary for his 10 o’clock class.

He cursed Eren’s 7:35 a.m. smile.

 

* * *

 

[ _iii_ ]

“Eren?”

Eren turned around, surprised to see Levi for a moment, then turned back to hide his face.

“Oh, hey Levi. Nice to see you here. Taking advantage of Starbucks happy hour, huh?”

He forced out a laugh, still not facing Levi.

Levi didn’t respond, still unsure about what to say.

“How did first semester go for you?” said Eren. “All in all I think I did pretty well for my first semester of college. Not bad, if I do say so myself. Although I could’ve done better on my last final, but I kind of think my professor was a bit unfair on that. I couldn’t tell what he was saying half the time—not because he had a heavy accent or anything, he was just a terrible lecturer—”

“You’re rambling.”

Eren shut his mouth.

“Your eyes are red.”

“I just broke up with my girlfriend,” said Eren.

“Oh,” was all Levi could think to say. “That sucks.”

“Yeah.”

When they both got inside, drinks in hand, Eren sat down at a table and stared at nothing in particular. Levi gave him one last glance before walking out the door.

Seconds later, he turned around and sat himself at Eren’s table. Eren looked up at him, surprised.

“A bear walks into a bar. He says to the bartender, ‘Can I have a gin—’”

Levi said nothing for thirty seconds.

“‘—and tonic,’” he resumed. “The bartender says, ‘Why the long pause?’ The bear holds up his hands and looks at them. ‘I don’t know; I got them from my dad.’”

Levi started cackling and banging on the table, looking at Eren expectantly.

“Eh? Eh?” he said.

Eren stared at him, disbelieving. Slowly his lips spread into a wide smile, and he shook his head.

“What the fuck?” said Levi. “That was funny.”

“No it wasn’t,” said Eren, laughing.

“All right, all right. A Roman walks into a bar. He asks for vodkas, and the bartender asks him how many. He holds up two fingers and says, ‘Five, please.’ What—nothing? Come on, these are funny.”

“That was straight up embarrassing,” said Eren.

Levi was pleased to see that he was grinning now.

He looked down at his watch.

“Well, learn to appreciate good jokes when you hear them. I gotta go now. Just got a job at the library near our hall.”

“Oh, good luck with that.”

“Thanks,” said Levi, and got up to leave.

Eren’s eyes fell to the drink in his hand, and he started fiddling with it, grin gone.

“You can stop by if you want more shitty jokes,” said Levi. “Or, like, a doughnut. We get doughnuts. If you like doughnuts. Not saying you do.”

Levi avoided eye contact when Eren looked up, so he couldn’t see him smiling.

“Thanks.”

…

He hadn’t really expected Eren to actually stop by. It was almost 1:00 a.m., and the library was about to close; no students were left in the building save for Levi, who was in charge of closing up and setting all the alarms.

Eren showed up in front of his counter just as the clock hit 1:00, not bothering to say hello.

“The bear joke made me a laugh a little bit, I guess.”

“Of course it did. I’m fucking hilarious.”

Eren smiled, shoving his hands deeper in his pockets.

“I’m really sad, Levi,” he admitted, mouth still set in a smile.

His words echoed in the large, dim room, and they both felt particularly small with the high ceilings and large bookcases looming over them. Outside it was dark and quiet, the long windows seeming like mouths gaping at them. It was a Monday night, no partying or rowdiness on campus. There were no distractions for Eren save for the trembling of his own fingers.

“I’m sorry,” said Levi.

“I’m really, really sad,” he said again, the words spilling out of his mouth.

“I know,” said Levi.

“I feel like my heart has been ripped into pieces. I thought that was so cliché, but it really feels like it.”

“Yeah.”

They spent the rest of the night sitting on the hard steps in front of the library, pulling their jackets tighter over themselves and trying to ignore the cold. A box of leftover doughnuts sat in Levi’s lap, and Eren took large bites while Levi rambled. It was surprising, how talkative Levi really was.

“So my first ex-boyfriend, he wasn’t too bad. He thought I was, like, a god or something. I could do no wrong. It was kind of fun, and then it was really not. He kept asking me what he did wrong when I got mad—I was actually the asshole in the relationship. He was too good for me. We broke up my freshmen year of high school.

“My third ex was six years older than me. I was sixteen. Yeah, it was a fucking disaster.

“My fourth ex—my last one—when we broke up he tried to hit me with his car. It was a really nice car. Hanji helped me key it later.”

“Was he cute?” said Eren, voice muffled by his full mouth.

“I just told you about my batshit exes and you’re asking me if the one that tried to run me over was cute?”

“Well?”

Levi rolled his eyes. “Yeah, he was pretty fucking cute. But not enough to cover up the crazy.”

“Wait—what about your second ex? You skipped him. What was he like?”

Levi smiled and let out a short laugh, looking up at the sky with amusement.

“That was Hanji.”

“What?”

A little piece of dough flew out of Eren’s mouth onto Levi’s pants, and he looked at with disgust.

“Oh, sorry,” said Eren.

He picked up the piece with fingers at put it back into his mouth. Levi looked at him in horror.

“You’re disgusting.”

“So I’ve heard,” said Eren. “Now what’s this about dating Hanji?”

“Oh, right. We weren’t actually dating. We were just pretending so her parents would think she’s straight.”

“Did it work?”

“They’re still paying for her tuition. What do you think?”

“Wow,” said Eren, another piece of dough flying from his mouth onto Levi’s shirt.

 

* * *

 

[ _x_ ]

Any observant stranger who spent fifteen minutes in the presence of both of them at the same time could tell that

1) they were completely in love with each other, and

2) they would never, ever tell each other.

Nobody would call either of them shy—Eren laughed little too loudly and hugged anyone who didn’t have an aversion to touching, and Levi would never hesitate call out anyone who was being an annoying shithead. Yet, somehow, they couldn’t ever manage to say simply, “I like you.” (“I’ve been head over heels for you since freshmen year and sometimes I stalk your blog and I’m really sad we don’t talk much anymore” was more accurate, but “I like you” would’ve sufficed.)

Most people thought Eren would fall into Levi’s “annoying shithead” category, but instead he somehow landed in the “people I don’t find annoying and maybe would like to kiss and probably fuck” category.

There were other people in that category, except Eren was the only one in the “people whose hand I’d like to hold category,” (that category didn’t exist until he came along, really) which made every other potential romantic partner irrelevant.

When Levi got up that morning and entered the hallway at 7:35 p.m., he saw a box  at his door and no Eren passing by. He kneeled down and took off the lid.

 _“found this mug at the grocery store. it screamed “you.” it violently screamed you and wouldn’t stop screaming until I bought it for you”_  was written on a note on top of a white mug.

Levi grabbed the mug inside the box, which had printed on it:

> stressed  
>  depressed  
>  and well dressed.

Levi swallowed, sitting down against the wall and reading the note over again. They had barely spoken for months, but Eren still went and did shit like this. He wanted to laugh at the mug and the note, but instead his chest felt too warm and he clutched the cup with both hands, wondering   _where the hell does he get off_  and thinking about what he could get Eren in return.

At the bottom of the note, he noticed a postscript:

P.S. got up early today to drop something off at a friend’s, in case you were wondering why you didn’t run into me.

He folded the note and put it back in the box with the mug, then went back to bed. There was no point in waking up early if he couldn’t hear Eren say “Good morning.”

When he lay down under the covers, though, he couldn’t sleep. He was too awake, wondering what Eren wore this morning and if he ate breakfast and what he had to drop off and to which friend.

It had been so, so long since they had really talked to each other now that they were no longer dorm neighbors or in the same class. He should’ve been over this crush by now, moved on to someone who was actually romantically interested in him.

(Move on to someone who wasn’t ridiculously pretty, who didn’t accept all his annoying quirks and habits with casual ease, who wasn’t perfectly fine with his bluntness and perpetual grumpiness, who hadn’t told him once, “You’re so easy to get along with,” when everyone else had always told him he was difficult.)

He let out a shaky breath, turning on his side and pulling the covers over himself.

…

When he finally woke up (he didn’t even remember falling asleep) it was noon.

He had had a 10:00 a.m. class.

“ _Shit_ ,” he said, looking at the time on his phone.

He threw his head back onto his pillow with a frustrated groan. After a few minutes he pulled himself out of bed and trudged down to the bathrooms, where a single toilet had flooded the floor with two inches of toilet water. Levi stared down in horror and walked away, hating the feeling of greasy hair and unwashed armpits, but refusing to step into toilet water.

“Hanji,” he said into his phone after dialing her number, “let me use the bathroom in your hall. Mine’s flooded.”

“I can’t—I’m stuck in the city all day. It’s the first day of my internship, remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Damn. Good luck.”

“Thanks! Hey, I met this guy that looked like you. He had your weird eyebrows and hipster sense of style—”

Levi hung up on her, laying back down on his bed.

It was only noon and already a crappy day. He grabbed his laptop and checked his messages.

> _anonymous asked:_
> 
> 25% off on all Starbucks coffee today. just thought you’d want to know!

He stared at his screen, almost wanting to weep. His daily Nice Anon was just so god damn nice. He wanted to bless this person and give them an appropriately distant hug, then get discounted coffee.

The Starbucks line ended up being ridiculously long, and three people had cut in front of him—he almost ended up yelling at them, but then he thought of Eren, who was always so understanding, and “What would Eren do?”

He decided that Eren would’ve lost his shit and confronted anyone who cut him in a long line, and that was when Levi got kicked out of Starbucks, still uncaffeinated.

By the end of the day he still hadn’t showered, hadn’t had any coffee, and hadn’t seen Eren’s face once. Laying in bed, he tried to ignore how disgusting dirty his body felt. Armin said that Eren still wasn’t back in his room when Levi had asked, and he wondered where he was so late (or who he was with, and the thought stabbed him with ugly, unwanted jealousy).

He sat up and opened up his laptop, and when he went onto Eren’s blog the tension in his shoulders melted.

There was  a new picture of Eren posted just minutes ago; he was smiling, sweaty in a T-shirt and at the gym with Mikasa in the background. Below the picture he had written,  _“cardio Fridays. don’t work out with Mikasa and Reiner because they’re so good at everything it’ll ruin your ego.”_

Levi leaned his head against the wall. He still felt like shit, but smiled at Eren’s smile. This wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. Eren’s entire existence was not fair at all. On a whim, he went to Eren’s ask page, clicked anonymous, and typed with a laugh:

Your face is infuriating. Stop taking selfies.

“You’re ruining my life,” Levi muttered, then hit “send.”

He fell asleep minutes later, his computer still on, and thought that maybe he could stand to go the gym once in a while. Maybe on Fridays, to be exact.

 

* * *

 

[ _iv_ ]

“Levi-not-Rivaille dot tumblr dot com,” Eren read over Levi’s shoulder.

“Fucking christ,” Levi said, exhaling. “You scared me. Don’t you believe in knocking?”

Eren took a seat on Levi’s bed. “Not really. Didn’t know you had a blog. What’s ‘Rivaille’?”

“Hanji’s cousin from Japan always pronounced my name ‘Rivaille.’ I never minded until everyone started calling me Rivaille. It was my nickname for four fucking years of high school.”

After a few seconds of Eren not responding, Levi looked over at him.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” said Levi.

…

“Rivaille,” said Professor Krunkel. “I got your email. If you come into my office hours tomorrow, we can discuss it further.”

Levi’s jaw twitched. “Thank you, Professor.”

“Rivaille, are you coming to the theatre performance later tonight?” said a friend in the cinema club.

“Hey, Rivaille, can I borrow your English notes?” said his classmate.

“Rivaille, is your name French?”

“Hey, Rivaille. What’s up?”

“You okay, Rivaille? You look kind of pissed off.”

“Dude, Rivaille, I think I saw Professor Krunkel smoking weed in the bathroom.”

“Rivaille—” said Hanji.

“Shut the fuck up,” he yelled.

Hanji laughed, slapping her knee. “I can’t believe it’s back. Eren is a godsend.”

…

Later that night, when Armin was still out at the library and Eren was laying in his bed comfortably, fully changed into his pajamas, Levi started banging on his door.

Eren started humming and smiling, pulling out his phone.

“Eren, you son of a bitch! Open the door!”

Eren began to type into the search bar, “levi-not-rivaille.tumblr.com” and scrolled through the blog.

“Why are there so many cat pictures?” Eren said to himself.

“Eren, I swear to god, I’m gonna break down this door!”

“ _‘The food in this place is such shit_ _,’_ ” Eren read off the screen. “What? I actually kind of like it.”

Eren looked at the little “ask” link and clicked on it.

“Huh,” he said. “You can send people messages.”

He typed in a message, saying the first thing that came to mind.

“Eren!”

“What are doing?” said a voice, which Eren recognized to be the RA’s.

“Fuck,” he heard Levi say.

 

* * *

 

[ _x_ ]

 

> _anonymous asked:_
> 
> Your face is infuriating. Stop taking selfies.
> 
> ... 
> 
> _eren-not-aaron answered:_
> 
> 1) go fuck yourself
> 
> 2) enjoy this picture of my face

“I meant it  _jokingly_ ,” Levi said with disbelief. “Right. Joking tones don’t translate over text. Shit.”

He accidentally implied that Eren was ugly. He had accidentally sent Eren anon hate.

He could not get any more pathetic.

He forced himself to forget it for the rest of the day until Eren walked up to him as he was working the counter of the library.

Eren dropped a few books to turn in, then said suddenly, “Am I ugly?”

“What?”

“Am I ugly?” he repeated.

Levi paused, then said, “No?”

“Sorry,” said Eren. “I just— I got this anonymous message saying I should stop taking selfies.”

Levi looked up at him, slack jawed and frozen.

“I didn’t really expect to get all bothered by it, but I kind of am.”

“I’m sure whoever sent you that is in an idiot,” Levi said, trying not to cringe. “Don’t listen to them.”

“I know,” said Eren. “But now I feel all weird. No one’s ever sent me hateful messages before.”

“Ignore it,” said Levi, not looking at him as he scanned the books. “It’s all stupid.”

“Yeah. Man, I wish I could just brush it off like you. You don’t seem to give a shit about what anyone thinks. I always admired that.”

Levi blinked.

“I never think I care about what other people say, but then I’ll actually get criticism and feel like shit.”

 _Say something_ , he urged himself. Eren was talking about something meaningful, and if there was any time to finally start talking to each other again, it was now.

“Yeah,” was all he could say.

_What the fuck is wrong with me?_

“But I’m not ugly, right?”

Levi laughed, finally looking at him. “No,” he said. “You’re not ugly.”

“Thanks,” Eren said with a small smile. “You’re not ugly too.”

Levi planted his face on the counter once Eren waved goodbye and was out of sight, still unable to believe that he accidentally insulted Eren and that his heart actually skipped a beat at “You’re not ugly too.”

“My god,” he said to himself, voice muffled by the counter.

There was a limit to how pathetic one human being could get, and he seemed to just roll right past it.

That night he set out to fix his mistake, sending another anonymous message.

 

* * *

 

[ _v_ ]

When their second year of college started, the only thing Levi was disappointed about was not being dorm neighbors anymore. He wouldn’t have an excuse to pop by Eren’s room and find something to complain about now that Eren was probably much farther away.

As he was finishing unpacking everything and settling into his new room, Eren appeared in his doorway carrying a bag of clothes.

“Hey neighbor,” Eren said with a grin.

“What?”

“In a bit of cruel coincidence, it looks like you’re stuck with me for another year,” he said.

“God damn it,” Levi said, trying to sound annoyed while hiding his smile. “Well, do you need help with your stuff?”

“Yeah, if you don’t mind.”

As he walked behind Eren, carrying his boxes just as he had done a year ago, he noticed something about the back of his head.

“Did you get a haircut?”

A hand flew to his hair, and he ran his fingers through it.

“Yeah. Does it look it bad?”

“No,” said Levi.

Eren still had bangs sweeping messily across his forehead, but his hair was shorter now, and Levi could see more clearly the nape of his neck.

He swallowed, blinking rapidly and looking away.

For the rest of the week, he couldn’t stop staring at Eren’s hair, Eren’s neck, Eren’s legs. Eren was almost exactly the same has he was last year, but it was like a new light had been thrown on him. Levi couldn’t bear to look at him and couldn’t bear to look away.

 

* * *

 

[ _x_ ]

 

> _anonymous asked:_
> 
> That’s not what I meant. Your face is infuriating because sometimes it hurts to look at you.
> 
> ...
> 
> _eren-not-aaron answered:_
> 
> FUCK OFF

“Shit.  _Shit_ ,” said Levi. “Hurts in a good way. I meant  _hurts in a good way_. God damn it.”

There was a knock on his door, and before he could get up, Eren was barging in.

“I feel like shit.”

“Why?” he said, hoping it wouldn’t be the answer he thought it’d be.

“ _‘It hurts to look at you.’_  Someone actually wrote me this. Apparently I’m so repulsive it hurts to look at me. Fuck this guy.”

“Just delete it and forget it,” said Levi, mentally kicking himself. “Really, forget about it. Please.”

“I get angry over the stupidest shit, I swear to god.”

Eren sat down on Levi’s floor, crossing his arms and furrowing his brows.

“Can I just— can I vent to you for a while? I’ve had a lot on my mind recently.”

He blinked, unable to respond for a moment.

“Yes— yeah. Of course.”

 

* * *

 

[ _vi_ ]

It was the first time in a long time that Eren had felt real jealousy.

Levi was sitting on a couch in the lounge, some guy sitting next to him with his arm resting on his shoulder.

He spotted Eren and and waved.

“Hey, Eren. This is my cousin, Josh.”

“Oh,” said Eren, feeling strangely foolish. “Nice to meet you.”

Something didn’t sit right in him for the rest of the day, a realization dawning on him slowly like waves reaching towards the shore.

His fingers were trembling.

 

* * *

 

[ _x_ ]

That night Levi ran through the day in his mind—Eren coming into his room for the first time in months, Eren complaining about the anonymous dick (Levi cleared his throat) that had sent him two rude messages, Eren running his hands through his hair and complaining about his classes, Eren confessing that sometimes he still felt the self-consciousness of his adolescent days.

The guilt ate at Levi—he had meant to  _compliment_  him, not make him feel more insecure.

At the same time, Eren came to him to complain. Why not Mikasa or Armin or Jean or Historia, he wondered.

Levi opened his laptop, went on his third most visited web page, and clicked anonymous.

…

 

> anonymous asked:
> 
> When I said it hurts to look at you, I meant it in a good way. The way it hurts to look at the sun or Titanic-era Leonardo DiCaprio.

 

> _anonymous asked:_
> 
> People want to gouge out their eyes when they look at you. There’s no point in having eyes because they’ll never see something as nice again.

 

> _anonymous asked:_
> 
> You should die. Your hair. Just kidding; your hair’s perfect.

 

“Oh my god.”

Eren kept scrolling down.

 

> _anonymous asked:_
> 
> Everybody hates you. Because you’re better than them.

 

> _anonymous asked:_
> 
> All your ships suck. (Each other off.)

 

> _anonymous asked:_
> 
> I hope you keep getting anon hate for the rest of your life.

 

Levi peeked his head in the door.

“What’re you laughing about?”

“Levi! Look at this,” Eren said, waving him in.

He turned his screen for him to look.

“I wonder if it’s actually the same person,” said Eren.

Levi smiled.

“What a rude guy.”

Eren continued to scroll through the messages—there were at least twenty, Levi remembered—chuckling at some and being legitimately flattered at others. Levi leaned back onto the bed, watching Eren as hunched over his laptop, dimples pressing into his cheeks.

 

* * *

 

[ _vii_ ]

Books dropped loudly onto the desk next to him, and Eren turned to see Levi looking back at him, amused.

“I see you also have an interest in Biomedical Research Issues in Minority Communities,” said Levi.

“Not my first choice GE,” said Eren.

“Mine either.”

It was the first class they had ever had together, but it felt natural to sit next to each other and discuss the lecture, questions they didn’t understand, or the frustrating piece of spinach stuck in the professor’s teeth that no one was willing to point out.

Eren sat close to Levi, sometimes scooting closer to look over his shoulder, making up some excuse to do so. Levi would flick his nose with a pen, tell him to focus on taking notes so he wouldn’t fail the midterm, but when Eren did, he missed the attention, so he bothered Eren with “You take notes all wrong” and “You have the worse handwriting I’ve ever seen.”

(In reality, Eren’s handwriting was actually only a little sloppy and quite endearing—Levi never knew handwriting could even be endearing.)

“Levi, let me borrow your notes from yesterday.”

“I didn’t take good notes, because  _someone_  kept breathing down my neck and asking me what I had for lunch because my breath smelled like garlic. And by breath did  _not_  smell like garlic by the way.”

(He didn’t mention the way Eren’s close proximity to his mouth sent him shivering, or the things it made him imagine later that night when he was in bed.)

“God,  _Rivaille_ , you’re so irresponsible.”

“Listen here, you fucker—”

 

* * *

 

[ _x_ ]

“I’m so fucking—”

“Woah, there,” said Hanji, struggling to catch Levi as he stumbled.

“He’s perfect,” he mumbled into her shoulder.

“You’re drunk.”

“I’m drunk and he’s  _perfect_.”

Levi stepped backwards away from Hanji and leaned against the hallway wall, slowly slumping downward until he was lying on the floor. Hanji tried pulling him up to no avail, Levi not complying at all.

“How the hell do you weigh one hundred forty-eight pounds?” she said, breathing heavily as she pulled at his shirt.

She finally let go and sighed, sitting down next to him.

“One of these days, Levi, I’m just going to slip a love letter into Eren’s mailbox and sign your name. I love the whole unrequited love narrative as much as the next guy, but three years is a little much.”

She looked over at Levi, who was typing on his phone.

“Who’re you drunk texting now?”

He didn’t hear her, only continuing to type, barely coherent.

> _levi-not-rivaille asked:_
> 
> u kvioe you your pref ect i lvoe you i  love yuo i lov eyouiloveyou it hurtd to look at yoiu

 Hanji looked over his shoulder, her eyes widening as he typed.

He didn’t press “send,” throwing his phone aside and going off on another rant about about Eren’s nose and arms and  _eyebrows_  of all things, which Hanji ignored in favor of swiping Levi’s phone.

She cleaned up some of the typos to make it more legible, but still left it looking appropriately like drunken texting.

She bit her lip, pausing for a moment, then added a little more.

Smiling, she pressed “send.”

 

* * *

 

[ _viii_ ]

Levi didn’t remember when they fell asleep, but when he woke up, he was sitting in an uncomfortably hard floor, his head resting on warm shoulders. Eren’s soft hair was brushing against Levi’s forehead, tickling him.

He turned around to see the library, and he remembered then what they had been doing—Eren was studying while Levi worked, and when it was time to close the library, they sat on the steps to talk about nothing in particular.

Levi’s phone read 2:24 a.m.

They both had class the next morning, so Levi turned to shake Eren awake. He was stopped by how peaceful his face looked while he slept, his mouth slightly open and his chest rising and falling steadily.

Moonlight dusted  his nose, his cheeks, his hair, casting shadows on the dips and curves of his face.

“Levi,” Eren said, eyes still closed and startling Levi.

“Jesus, I thought you were still sleeping.”

“Let’s skip class tomorrow.”

Levi snorted, wanting to scold Eren for being irresponsible, but the idea was too tempting.

“Whatever,” he said, and buried his face in the crook of Eren’s neck.

A strange sense of déjà vu overcame him, and he couldn’t remember if he had done this with one of his old boyfriends or if he had done this with Eren at some point, a long time ago in a hazy dream.

 

* * *

 

[ _x_ ]

“What the fuck. What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck,” Levi said as he looked at his outgoing messages. “What the fuck did I do. What the fuck.”

“What’s wrong, Levi?” Erwin said from across the room, rolling over on his bed. “You’re up so early.”

“I fucked up,” Levi said as ran out of the room, still dressed in last night’s clothes, and made his way to the fourth floor where Eren’s dorm was.

When he reached his room, the door was open and Eren was just turning on his laptop.

“Hey, Levi. What’s up?”

“Did you—have you checked your blog at all since last night?”

Eren looked at his computer, then back at Levi. “No, why?”

“Nothing. Hey, Hanji says she wants to see you. Right now. It’s an emergency.”

“Is everything okay?” said Eren.

“I don’t know. You better go see,” said Levi.

He dragged Eren up out of his chair and pushed him out the door, Eren turning back and giving him a confused look as he left.

Levi went to Eren’s blog and was relieved to see that he was still logged in. He clicked into his inbox, cringed at his typo-filled message, and deleted it.

He walked back to his room with a sigh of relief, ignoring the disappointment that accompanied it.

 

* * *

 

[ _ix_ ]

Since the summer started, it had been two months since he had seen Eren, a strange piercing loneliness haunting him on some nights when he realized he couldn’t hear Eren’s voice through the walls. They’d text occasionally, but Eren was a terrible texter, and it was no substitute for seeing each other in person.

Levi gave in and grabbed the cellphone by his pillow, going onto Eren’s blog. It was a relief to see Eren’s words, Eren’s typos, his pictures and videos and trivial thoughts.

He scrolled for hours, thinking that perhaps the letters and glow of the screen would somehow leave him with some residual Eren that would satisfy him. His fingers pressed harder into the phone as the night went on, almost hurting.

Eren was right here, on his screen.

Eren was hundreds of miles away, in his home city.

Levi threw the phone next to his pillow when he had seen everything new that was posted.

Eren was all he could think about all summer, and all that he didn’t have, and Levi was going a little crazy.

He buried his face into the pillow, trying to force out the pain in his chest and slow down the erratic beating of his heart, hoping that if he could bury himself deep enough, he’d stop hearing the voice in his head that kept saying “Eren, Eren, Eren,” all the way into the morning.

When the sun hit his face without Levi getting a single minute of sleep that night, he finally had to admit it.

“I love you,” he said in his empty room, the words dissipating in the air like smoke.

 

* * *

 

[ _x_ ]

Levi sat at his usual spot behind the library counter, scanning books and answering questions while trying to keep the utterly bored look off his face (he usually didn’t care, but his supervisor said something about “exuding friendliness and helpfulness,” which, wow, those were new things for Levi and hard to adjust to).

Every ten minutes he’d look at the table Eren usual sat at, thinking about how he hadn’t seen him in the library all week. He was sure he had deleted the message, so there wasn’t any reason he could think of for Eren to be avoiding him.

“Unless he figured out on his own what a lovesick sack of shit I am and decided to keep away from me for the rest of his life,” he said to himself.

“I assure you I did not.”

Levi’s eyes widened and he looked up to see Eren, whose face was inexplicably flushed.

“Did—”

“Don’t say anything!” Eren said.

He took a deep breath, and Levi waited for him to start talking.

He didn’t. Eren stood there, silent, for what felt like minutes.

“You realize that I get email copies of the messages I receive, right? Even if you secretly delete them while I’m asking Hanji what she called me for and she has no idea what I’m talking about.”

“Fuck.”

Eren pursed his lips, trying to find his words.

After a few more heavy moments of silence, he said, “I think your blog is kind of pretentious. I don’t really get why there are so many pictures of cats, either—like, my god, what’s with the cats?

“Sometimes I read your late night ramblings about your family, and I wish you’d talk to me about it, even though I have no right to the information. I still wonder who that poem from months ago was about, and now I think it was about me, and I can’t stop thinking about it. Was it about me? It was about me, right? I’m almost sure of it now.

“And about that picture you posted two weeks ago comparing the maroon jeans and forest green jeans—I think you looked better in the maroon. You look really, really good in those pants. I stared at your ass for like half an hour when you weren’t looking.

“Also, you complain too much about the food here—it’s actually pretty good—but the other day I was at the grocery store and ground beef was on sale and I was almost going to make you a lasagna, because you said you’d never had it before, and I really like lasagna. I think of you every time I go to the grocery store and I don’t know why.”

Eren’s fingers were trembling, but his eyes were firmly set on Levi.

Levi had no words.

Eren swallowed thickly, then said, “I’m the one who sends you anonymous messages every morning. I wasn’t sure if me sending you messages was bothering you or not, but last year I caught you reading one and you started smiling at your computer and I’m in love with you too.”

In a fit of courage he put his still shaking hand over Levi’s, squeezing it gently.

He said softly, “I’ll let you keep sending me anon hate as long as you ask me out a real date one of these days. I would ask you on a date, but one time I tried and I got so nervous I almost threw up. So I think you have to be the one to ask.”

He licked his lips, looking at Levi nervously.

“Say something,” he urged after a while.

No words would come out of his mouth, so he stood up and half a second later their lips were crashing together for the first time, not soft like moonlight dusting Eren’s nose but rough, needy, and satisfying. It was a kiss that hurt from years of voiceless sweet nothings and quiet screaming and unnoticed loving glances, finally bursting until their lips were bruised.

In Levi’s head there was still that same voice going “Eren, Eren, Eren,” but Eren was right here, whispering “Levi, Levi, Levi” between breaths, between kisses, between burning glances.

“Your face is also infuriating, by the way,” Eren breathed against his lips.

And it hurt, hurt, hurt so good.

 

* * *

 

[ _xi_ ]

 

 

> _anonymous asked:_
> 
> no discount at Starbucks today, but they’re having a sale on a box of dozen donuts at Krispy Kreme. just so you know. in case there’s someone you know who really likes doughnuts. especially the red velvet ones. cough. (P.S. you haven’t asked me on out a date yet, it’s been a week, step up your game what the fuck, i’m needy okay?) (P.P.S. this is Eren if you couldn’t figure it out just ask me out already GOD)

…

For the next week after the infamous Library Kiss (everyone saw it, as much as Levi liked to pretend no one did), Levi finally got to take Eren out of the “I want to hold your hand” category and put him into, “Okay, I’ve held your hand, maybe we can have sex now category” (he thought he’d wait a month or so before he told Eren about it, lest Eren think he was in it all just for sex).

Their fingers were laced together as they walked down the hallway. It was 8:00 a.m., which was an ungodly hour for Levi on Saturdays, but Eren was a morning person and Levi was an Eren person, so he made the sacrifice.

“It’s so fucking early,” he said. “Why are we awake?”

“I check my mail every Saturday morning at this time,” said Eren.

“Why do I have to come?”

“I can go alone. Do you want to go back to bed?”

“No,” Levi grunted, squeezing his hand more tightly.

Eren snickered.

“Shut up.”

…

 

> _anonymous asked:_
> 
> I can’t think of anything hateful to say right now except that your smile is so pretty it probably shouldn’t exist. Fuck you. If you meet me at the movie theatre today at 7:00 I’ll buy you dinner afterwards and possibly hold your hand. If you’re okay with that. (Please be okay with that.)

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> (also inspired by [this post](http://officialunitedstates.tumblr.com/post/95312093961/how-do-you-deal-with-anon-hate)!)


End file.
